When I take a breath and start to move, I construct a sentence. It is what happens when I exhale. A ‘sentence’ is logical, it has integrity and consistency. It does something. Lee Connor, dancer & choreographer

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These breaths, of course, can and should vary in duration, as they are not literally the length of one breath of the body at rest, but rather like a spoken sentence, with possibly a subclause or two; or, using another comparison, like a melodic line a flutist might play in one breath. Doris Humphrey, dancer & choreographer

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Our religion is the poetry in which we believed. Santayana

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“We are hamstrung by a fear of being miscellaneous. The book-trade, accursed of god, man and nature, makes no provision for any publication that is not one of a series; and masterwork is never one of a series, neither is vital invention. It has its place in the historic process, which is far from the same.” from Ezra Pound’s letter to John Crowe Ransom, 15Oct38

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Language of poet(ry) often allies itself with song, not oratory. Louis Zukofsky, A Test Of Poetry, 1948 (but I can’t now find this in “The Test of Poetry — lg)

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The complications of rhetorical ornament (similes, metaphors, conceits) in later times seem to have created a printed (and worse, a bookish) poetry written to be read silently rather than to be spoken or sung. Zukofsky

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It is the hardest task for even great poets to limit the number of words used to maximum advantage. Zukofsky

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Condensation is more than half of composition. The rest is proper breathing space, ease, grace. Zukofsky

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As poetry, only objectified emotion endures. Zukofsky

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I was already a convert to the Romantic spirit, and myth in that spirit is not only a story that expresses the soul but a story that awakens the soul to the real persons of its romance, in which the actual and the spiritual are revealed, one in the other. Robert Duncan, p42 The Truth & Life of Myth

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About larry goodell

Poet exploring his viable extensions - publisher, performer, playwright - hand to hand help in creating spaces for poetry to be live in - reading events, recordings, online and tangible publications in the vocal spirit of his New Mexico.